Taxes, weight gain, depression, loneliness—book advances are like lottery payoffs For those who think they have a book inside them just waiting to be written—and, really, isn’t that pretty much everyone?—landing a book contract would be like winning the lottery. Dreams would come true; doors would open. Anything could happen. “You hear about these big contracts coming in, and it whets your appetite,” said Leah McLaren, a columnist for Canada’s Globe and Mail, who landed a book contract with HarperCollins Canada in 2003 for her chick-lit novel, The Continuity Girl. “You start to think, ‘This is my lottery ticket …....